A Valley to Die For (4 page)

“We’re right about the blastin’. There’s lotsa that, and lotsa dust. Mountains of busted rock, and machines big enough to move mountains. They got a couple of ponds supposed to hold rain water until the dust settles out, but they looked pretty full of muck themselves, and, if they work, why was that crick milky?”

Roger’s smile had disappeared. “Let me tell you now, Herb says that valley was a beauty before the quarry came. Clear water where folks fished and went swimmin’, and high bluffs with different layers of rock. Once he went to a church picnic on the farm there, and kids picked bunches of wildflowers. Some kid even climbed part way up a bluff and got some kinda flower there.”

He looked at Shirley, and she said, “Wild columbine.”

“Yea, those. They had it all, huckleberries, blackberries, walnuts; birds and other creatures everywhere, just like we got in our valley now.

“Well, maybe since that quarry has been there more than fifteen year, they could do things rougher than they kin now, what do you think? Maybe there’s new rules?” He looked around at the group again, still not smiling.

Jason spoke up. “Let’s not forget our objective—that is, what we want to do—is stop the thing altogether. Get everyone told how destructive it’ll be and get it stopped.”

Carrie winced, wondering if Roger had noticed Jason’s pompous assumption that he wouldn’t understand the term “objective,” but Roger simply shrugged.

“May not work that way, Jason. The quarry owner may have friends we can’t fight, and that land didn’t come cheap, even if it had been abandoned fer years. It’s good farm land fer around here, so the quarry folks got real money tied up. It may be all we kin do is figure out a way to keep ‘em from lettin’ that dust fly everywhere or run into the crick. Most of the regular folk, those of us been here, think if the county government is behind it and the place holds a few jobs out like a carrot in front of a mule, ain’t no way any of us is gonna stop it. County’s gonna think more about money than care fer one more little ol’ valley bein’ smashed up.”

Everyone was quiet, and Carrie felt her own hopes sag. Were they losing the will to fight? Maybe JoAnne’s report—whatever it was—would make the difference.

Jason turned to her. “You’re next,” he said. “What did all the officials say?”

Carrie’s assignment had been to talk with people on the town council in Guilford, seven miles downstream on Walden Creek, as well as the state congressman, members of the Quorum Court, and the County Judge.

She reported first on what the judge, who was the chief executive officer of the county, had said about needing rock for road work, then added, “The others
acted
sympathetic, but no one knew of any state or county laws that could stop a quarry as long as owners got approval of their plans for maintaining air and water quality. Roger’s right, there are new laws about that. The best anyone could suggest is that national environmental regulations be looked into. Also, they said we might contact the State Game and Fish Commission and ask about endangered species in the area, maybe in the caves. Perhaps there would be something there. I wonder if the Environmental Commission told JoAnne the same thing?

“Anyway,” Carrie finished, “though a few of them seemed to understand how we felt, and the people in town are concerned about the creek, not one of them was ready to oppose the quarry. I think it’s all going to be up to us.”

Silence held the room until Henry said, agitation evident in his voice, “Well, the next step seems to be what JoAnne found out in Little Rock, so where is she? Why isn’t she here?”

Carrie got up. “I’ll call her house and then bring back something to eat. Everyone want sausages with their rolls and coffee?”

Shirley followed Carrie into the kitchen, bringing the tray of used coffee cups with her. Without asking for instructions, she turned on the kettle and began spooning instant coffee into cups. Carrie punched in JoAnne’s number and pictured FatCat pacing around the offending noise on the desk in the kitchen.

After fifteen rings Carrie gave up and went to get the plates.

CHAPTER
III

The committee ate Carrie’s brunch as eagerly as if she’d spent all morning in the kitchen preparing it.

There, she thought, that proves it. It doesn’t take a zillion-ingredient recipe and stacks of dirty pans. All it takes is friends getting together—then no one cares whether your kitchen helper was Julia Child or the Pillsbury Doughboy!

Carrie’s helper was much more likely to be the Pillsbury Doughboy. By the time she married Amos, she had established a casual approach toward culinary efforts in her nearly-spinster life. Frozen dinners and simple, one-dish meals suited her just fine, though sometimes she did enjoy creating specialty edibles from unique and often bizarre combinations of basic ingredients. She had frequently surprised guests with dishes whose origins were long lost in “Carrie’s kitchen fiddling,” as Amos called it. Since he preferred to work late and eat alone at the Tulsa Legal Club, it hadn’t mattered to him whether she cooked fancy or didn’t cook at all.

And, as far as their son Rob was concerned... well, he’d been used to ready-prepared food from the time she opened the first Gerber jar. When she’d tried to apologize to him recently for what she had begun to suspect was a warm-fuzzy-home-cooked-meal-deprived childhood (was it something she’d read in a magazine?), Rob only laughed and asked how she thought he’d manage alone today if he hadn’t learned her cooking methods early on.

Perhaps it was no surprise that, over the years, Carrie’s friends had given her cookbooks. She always thanked each giver with the same burst of enthusiasm that inspired her special kitchen creations, and every one of them went away feeling that all Carrie McCrite had lacked was the right cookbook. She shelved each book in a special maple bookcase Amos brought home from his office, dusted them all twice a year, and sold them all—in mint condition—right before her move to the Ozarks. She kept only a small file box with a few favorite recipes and a hand-written notebook that preserved the details of her more successful kitchen experiments.

Now she felt a warm satisfaction as she watched Jason, whose wife was a dedicated cook-from-scratch woman, pick a last scrap of caramel topping off his plate, lift it to his mouth, then lick his fingers carefully. After a short pause for appreciation, he looked around at the group and said, “We can’t wait any longer for JoAnne, so we might as well adjourn the meeting. It’s important to find out what she learned from the Environmental Commission before we plan our next move.”

Roger and Shirley looked just as placid as they had when the meeting opened, but it was easy to tell that everyone else was annoyed by JoAnne’s absence.

Mag said sourly, “It’s just like her to plan a meeting and then run off after some will-o’-the-wisp at the last minute, not caring a bit if it bothers any of us.”

The group agreed on the necessity for taking some kind of action as soon as possible, so Jason suggested they meet again the following Saturday, making sure JoAnne would be there. Mag invited them to get together at her house.

“Jack’ll be busy around the farm,” she said, “so we’ll have the place to ourselves.”

Carrie had met Jack Bruner on one of her rare visits to Mag, and she saw him in Guilford occasionally, but that was all. Mag was certainly opinionated and outspoken, but at least she was friendly enough. Friendly was the last word Carrie would have chosen to describe Mag’s husband. He was dark and moody, taciturn to the point of hostility. Carrie thought of him as one of those people you’d never want to be alone with in a dark alley—or anywhere else.

Whenever Mag’s sharp tongue tried Carrie’s patience, she’d remember Jack and pray for the Lord to help her be kind and loving toward his wife, and to love Jack too, although that seemed impossible.

Carrie couldn’t help suspecting that Jack was an abusive husband. Without meaning to pry or be a busybody, she’d find herself looking for bruises or other signs of injury every time she was with Mag. So far, she’d seen no outward signs of abuse, and Mag had never said anything to suggest such a terrible thing, but Carrie often wondered if Mag’s sharp, thoughtless tongue wasn’t the result of an unhappy life.

Everyone on the committee had been surprised when Mag asked to join them in the effort to stop the quarry. Carrie herself was quite sure the Bruners didn’t care about the valley one way or another. She had decided Mag just wanted a chance to get away from the farm and Jack—though now she had invited them to her home. Maybe what she wanted was friendship with her neighbors.

After Jason closed the meeting and everyone left, Carrie finished cleaning up in the kitchen, thinking all the while that she should walk down to JoAnne’s house.

No one in the group seemed worried about JoAnne, simply because she was so well-known for leaving home to pursue any quest that interested her at the moment. But what about the cat? JoAnne usually called when she was going to be gone more than a few hours and asked Carrie if she’d look in on FatCat—a request that was always irritating, since Carrie worked full time and felt she had better things to do than go stroke a spoiled cat while JoAnne went off on a lark.

JoAnne could leave food and water out to cover most absences but said she didn’t want her cat to feel lonely, so would Carrie mind stopping by for a moment to make sure the cat was all right, and maybe give her a love pat or two?

Carrie’d finally had enough nerve just the other day to tell JoAnne how she felt about tending the ego of a cat. She thought JoAnne had ignored her protest, but maybe she’d listened after all. Maybe that was why she hadn’t called about FatCat before she left.

JoAnne was like Amos. She was certain of her opinions, self-assured, smart, easy to be jealous of, easy to admire and love. Carrie had understood from the beginning why she was drawn to JoAnne, and she sometimes felt overwhelmed because two such people had come into her life, taking, in their turn, the position her father once held.

But right now, checking on the cat did give her a good excuse to check JoAnne’s house, and she didn’t feel like settling down to her work until she’d done that.

The two women had worn a path through the forest between their homes, and as she walked the familiar, leaf-padded trail, Carrie wondered if notes from JoAnne’s meeting with the environmental people might be on her desk in the kitchen. She would have taken good notes.

Why on earth, though, had she asked Henry to go over the notes with her? Did he have some special training or knowledge about such things? He had been a real estate agent after he left the police force. Maybe he knew something important about property law that would help them? It would have to be very important, or JoAnne would never have asked his help.

It was cold, getting colder, and the sky was clear. That meant there could be frost flowers in the woods tomorrow morning and since they only appeared a few times each winter, she didn’t want to miss a chance to see them. She’d go for a walk before church, carrying her portable radio so any trespassing hunters would know she was in the area.

When Carrie came out of the woods into the sunny clearing around her friend’s house, everything looked normal, and very quiet. The place where JoAnne parked her grey truck was empty. Carrie knocked on the door, listened to the silence, then, feeling an increasing skin-prickling nervousness, picked up the third flower pot by the front steps, got the key, and opened the door. She called JoAnne’s name, timidly at first, then more loudly. There was no answer. Of course not.

The house felt cold. Was there no heat going?

FatCat appeared from the direction of the kitchen and rubbed against her boots, making little noises that sounded like soft yips.

Carrie took off her glove and bent to stroke the silky back. Peculiar cat. It had traits from so many ancestors that nothing could be decided about its background, according to JoAnne at least. The cat looked and sounded something like a Siamese but had faint stripes in her coat, and her blue eyes were set in a large head.

Well, whatever else FatCat might be, she was not fat, which accentuated the largeness of her head, and now she was definitely hungry. Carrie went to the kitchen, and both she and the cat stared into two empty bowls. She put water in one and found the box of dry cat food. It was almost empty, but there was enough for today’s meal. Possibly JoAnne really had gone for cat food and got side-tracked somewhere.

While the cat ate, Carrie surveyed the desktop, pushing papers around carefully with one finger. She wouldn’t have to tell JoAnne she’d looked for the report. All she needed was a quick peek to see if something hopeful had been offered. Then she could go home in peace and wait until JoAnne came back.

The top of the desk was neater than usual except for scattered mail. There were a couple of bills, ads, a catalogue. No notes.

Carrie walked into the living room, rocking her feet carefully from heel to toe at each step to keep her shoes from making any noise on the wood floor between the braided rugs. She looked at table tops. Nothing.

Next, the bedroom. In the silent house, Carrie heard her breath swishing in and out as she turned down the hall. Could JoAnne be sick? That possibility hadn’t occurred to her before. The house was so cold, it just felt empty.

Except for a cat, she amended, as FatCat brushed past her leg and disappeared through the partially closed bedroom door. She didn’t follow the cat immediately, but stood outside the door, shaking with a sudden chill. Maybe she had no business searching her friend’s house, but now she had to check the bedroom, in case...

She used a finger to push the door open and realized she’d been holding her breath. She gulped in air when she saw the bed, empty except for a cat who had rolled into a circle on the pillow and was just now squeezing her eyes shut.

The bathroom was empty too, and JoAnne’s pajamas were hanging neatly on the back of the door.

Carrie found the thermostat outside the bedroom door, set at 55—okay if the woodstove was in use. She returned to the living room and put her hand close to the stove, then touched the surface of the black iron box. Cold. JoAnne hadn’t started a fire this morning. Strange. Had she planned to come back, feed the cat, and get the stove going before the meeting at Carrie’s began?